Charles Rex, Ethel May Dell [find a book to read txt] 📗

eyes of a creature who has known the wild agony of fear and is not easily reassured. Yet the face was the face of a child.
She leaned out a little further on her sill and addressed the stranger. "Come up and speak to me!" she said very kindly. "Bunny will show you the way."
A shy flickering smile answered her. She cast a questioning look at Bunny.
"Yes, that's Maud--my sister," said Bunny. "Come along! This way!"
They entered the house by a French window, and Maud drew back into her room. What was there in that childish face that appealed so tremendously to her womanhood--wholly banishing her first involuntary sense of recoil? She could not have said, she was only conscious of the woman in her throbbing with a deep compassion. She stood and waited for the child's coming with a strangely poignant expectation.
She heard Bunny's voice talking cheerily on the stairs, but his words provoked no response. She went to the door and opened it.
Bunny was leading the way; in fact his companion seemed to be lagging very considerably in the rear.
Maud moved out into the passage, and Bunny stood to one side with a courteous gesture. "Mademoiselle Antoinette Larpent!" he announced.
The small figure in blue drew itself together with a certain bravado and came forward.
Maud held out her hands. "My dear child," she said, "I expected you long ago."
The hands she clasped were very small and cold. They did not cling to her as she had half expected. The blue eyes flashed her a single nervous glance and fell.
"I'm sorry I'm late, madam," said the visitor in a low, punctilious voice.
Maud felt amused and chilled in the same moment. "Come and sit down!" she said. "We will have some tea upstairs. Bunny, go and order it, will you?"
"With pleasure," said Bunny. "And may I return?"
She smiled at him as she passed an arm about the girl's narrow shoulders. "Yes, you can come back when it's ready. Come in here, dear! You will like to take off your things. How long have you been here?"
"Only five minutes," came the murmured answer; she thought it had a deprecating sound.
"You must be tired," she said kindly. "You came from town? How is it you are so late? Did you miss your train?"
"No, madam." Very nervously came the reply. The contrast between this and the boyish freedom of manner on the terrace a few seconds before would have been ludicrous if it had not been somehow pathetic.
She passed on, too considerate to press for details. "Take off your hat and coat, won't you? When we have had some tea I will take you to your room."
She was pleased to see that Charlie's _protege_ was garbed with extreme simplicity. Her fair hair, which had been closely shorn, was beginning to curl at the ends. She liked the delicate contrasting line of the black brows above the deep blue of the eyes. She noticed that the veins on the white temples showed with great distinctness.
"Sit down!" she said. "And now you must tell me what to call you. Your name is Antoinette, isn't it?"
"I'm generally called Toby," said the visitor in a very shy voice. "But you will call me--what you like."
"Would you like me to call you Toby?" Maud asked.
"Yes, please," said Toby with unexpected briskness.
Maud smiled. "Very well, my dear. Then that is settled. We are not going to be strangers, you and I. I expect you know that Lord Saltash and I are great friends--though I have never met your father."
Toby's pale young face flushed suddenly. She was silent for a moment. Then: "Lord Saltash has been very good to me," she said in her shy voice. "He--saved me from drowning. Wasn't it--wasn't it nice of him to--take the trouble?"
"Quite nice of him," Maud agreed. "You must have been very frightened, weren't you?"
Toby suppressed a shudder. "I was rather. And the water was dreadfully cold. I thought we should never come up again. It was like--it was like--" She stopped herself. "He said I was never to talk about it--or think about it--so I won't, if you don't mind."
"Tell me about your father!" said Maud sympathetically.
For the second time the blue eyes flashed towards her. "Oh, he is still ill in a nursing home and not allowed to see anyone." There was a hint of recklessness in her voice. "They say he'll get well again, but--I don't know."
"You are anxious about him," Maud said.
"No, I'm not." Recklessness became something akin to defiance. "I don't like him much. He's so surly."
"My dear!" said Maud, momentarily disconcerted.
"Well, it's no good pretending I do when I don't, is it?" said Toby, and suddenly smiled at her with winning gracelessness. "It isn't my fault We're not friends--never have been. Why," she made a little gesture of the hands, "we hardly know each other. I'd never been on _The Night Moth_ before."
"And you'll never go again," commented Bunny, entering at the moment, "Maud, do you know I took--Miss Larpent--" he turned deliberately to Toby who snapped her fingers in airy acknowledgment--"to see the races instead of coming straight back--according to the boss's instructions."
"Oh! So that's where you've been!" said Maud.
"Exactly so." Bunny pulled up a chair and disposed his long legs astride it. "We saw several events, and made a bit. Then Forest Fire let us down badly and we lost the lot. After that we went into the paddock to cool ourselves and met the boss, who at once--somewhat rudely--ordered us home. I have an impression he's feeling waxy with me for some reason," Bunny ended, stroking his chin reflectively. "Daresay I shall get over it, however."
"What a pity you went!" said Maud.
"Not at all," said Bunny. "We enjoyed it. It's fun doing naughty things sometimes, isn't it,--er--Miss Larpent?"
"Don't be an ass!" said Toby tersely.
Maud raised her brows, but Bunny grinned with delight. "Thank you Toby! I take the hint. There shall be no more ceremony between us. Ah! There come the children along the path by the summerhouse!" he sprang to the window and sent forth a yell, turning back almost instantly to say, "Sorry, Maud! I'm afraid I forgot your head. How is it?"
He did not wait for her reply, but leaned out again immediately to address the advancing children with noisy gayety.
Toby looked up at Maud, hesitated, and rose. "Let us go and have tea with the children!" she said. "It will be quieter for you."
Maud put out a gentle hand to her. "No, dear. You stay with me. Bunny may if he likes!"
This time Toby's fingers closed tightly upon her own. "Sure?" said Toby.
"Quite sure," said Maud, smiling at her.
Toby turned sharply and pinched Bunny's elbow as he leaned from the window. He drew himself in and stared at her.
"You're making too much noise," she told him curtly. "You go and racket downstairs!"
Bunny's eyes widened for a second in indignant amazement, then abruptly he threw up his chin and laughed. "I like you!" he declared. "You're the cockiest thing in girls I've ever seen!"
Toby pulled at his elbow like a small, persistent dog. "Go on!" she commanded. "Go down to them! Mrs. Bolton and I want to have our tea alone. I'll come and play with you presently--if you're good."
It was spoken wholly without coquetry, much as an elder brother might speak to a younger. It was plain that she meant to have her way, though Maud, who knew that there was a very strong mixture of stubbornness in Bunny, wondered much if she would get it. Amusement, however, kept the upper hand with him. Toby's treatment evidently appealed strongly to his sense of humour. Perhaps her determination also made its impression upon him, for after a little more chaff on his part and brisk insistence on hers he departed, laughing, to join the children.
Toby saw him to the door and returned calm and triumphant.
"Well done!" said Maud. "You know how to deal with spoilt children evidently."
Toby looked at her sharply as she sat down, almost as if she expected a double meaning to the words.
"Do you mean men?" she said, and for an instant her childish face wore a look of contempt. "Oh, anyone can manage men--given a fair chance. There's not much cleverness needed for that."
She spoke with the decision of one who knew, and in spite of the difference of years between them Maud could not question her confidence. She had a curious feeling that--either by experience or intuition--this girl knew more than she.
She made no comment therefore, and after a moment Toby spoke her last word on the subject with characteristic brevity.
"There's only one rule to follow with men--that is, if you want any peace at all. Make up your mind and stick to it! If they don't like it, let 'em go to--" She checked suddenly, and coloured deeply under Maud's eyes--"I mean, let 'em do the other thing," she ended, on a note that somehow seemed to ask for pardon.
"I see," said Maud gently, in a tone that conveyed it.
Toby threw her a little smile, half-grateful and half-mischievous; and curiously in that moment a bond was formed between them which was destined to endure.


CHAPTER VII
THE PROMISE

There was undoubtedly a frown on Jake's usually serene countenance when he walked up the great stable-yard a little later that evening and came upon Bunny lounging in a doorway with his hands in his pockets talking to one of the men.
"Look here, young feller, I want a word with you," he said, with his customary directness, and laid a somewhat peremptory hand upon the boy's shoulder.
Bunny, with a cigarette between his lips, turned and laughed at him without a hint of discomfiture. "All right, boss. I'll come," he said, and linked his arm in Jake's with boyish friendliness.
He was half-a-head taller than Jake, but the look of power that was so apparent in the older man was wholly absent in him. He moved his long limbs with a loose swing that lacked energy though it seemed to denote a certain restlessness.
"Wonder what you'll do without me here when I go to Charlie," he remarked, as Jake did not immediately speak.
"I should say the sooner you go the better," said Jake rather brutally, "if I were only sure you were going to the right place."
"Have a smoke!" said Bunny with unruffled amiability, proffering his case.
Jake pushed it from him with a curt sound of dissatisfaction.
"All right. Don't!" said Bunny, with instant haughtiness, and returned it to his pocket.
He would have withdrawn his hand from his brother-in-law's arm, but Jake retained it there forcibly, steering for his own private office at the end of the stable-yard.
Bunny submitted, but his face grew ominously dark as they passed in silence between the long rows of loose-boxes in the soft spring twilight. As they neared Jake's room he drew himself together with the action of a man who braces his muscles for a sudden strain, and in a moment he was older, less defiant, more dignified.
"That's better," Jake said, making him enter first. "There are times, Sir Bernard Brian, when I want to lick you, as you never--unfortunately--were licked in your early youth. Other times--like the present--when the breed gets the better of me, and I can only stand outside--and admire."
"Oh, don't be a blithering idiot, Jake!" said Bunny in hot discomfiture. Jake's hand grasped his shoulder. "Sit down, and bring yourself to my level for a minute! Maybe I am a blithering idiot, maybe I'm not. But I could take you by the heels and dip you in